Aiming for more than getting you from point A to point B, app Waze will now do its part to help save lives. Starting today, the social navigation app will dish out AMBER alerts distributed by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Alerts will appear at the top of the Waze app 10 seconds after you have stopped in a relevant geographic area, one where you may be close enough to help. The banner will provide key details such as the child's appearance along with the make and model of the vehicle they're suspected to be in. Clicking on the notification pulls up more information.

The app scans the US for AMBER Alerts every 10 minutes. Popups should disappear automatically once you tap on the map or start moving. This way the feature should hopefully not be an impediment while driving.

Comments

James Roberts

Great! I love helping other people sort out their child custody issues.

Ram fickle

They're not forcing you to. The least you could do is ignore it, not criticize it.

James Roberts

Don't worry, I turned off alerts after one woke me up in the middle of the night to notify me that a child had been kidnapped by her own father. And I don't use Waze. But, since we were talking about it, I thought I'd go the extra mile and criticize the whole program as being a waste of public funds.

Gideon Waxfarb

LOL, I don't know about the whole program being a waste, but I had to uninstall a weather app that insisted on notifying me with one of these alerts at 3am, with no option to disable them.

sdff

Theres alot of issues with the program. It was used to force spending on digital freeway signs "for the children". The freeway signs were later repurposed for other notifications such as encouraging you to spy on your neighbors and report them for terrorism. Now, the cell phone alerts support "presidential" messages which cannot be disabled without rooting and loading custom firmware from foreign countries, thus losing amber alerts entirely

Biff Wonsley

IPAWS has experienced hiccups, too. Earlier this year, hackers gained access to the IPAWS system at local TV stations in four states and broadcast fake warnings of a zombie apocalypse. “The bodies of the dead are rising from their graves and attacking the living,” the pranksters wrote.

j

Absolutely, our tax money should be used exclusively for bombing women and children in foreign countries.

ThatBabyAintMine

It does seem like the only children that actually end up missing are those whose parents aren't around to take care of them. Sad.

Bill Joyce

Just what I need is Waze giving me more alerts.

Fty

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